Wikileaks boss to turn himself in

The boss of online Whistleblowing site Wikileaks seems seems set to turn himself in today.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks , is expected to pop into a South East of London police station and head over to a magistrates' court. He is wanted over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden. He is currently in hiding in the south-east of England but police are understood to have the necessary paperwork to arrest him.

Mark Stephens, Assange’s British lawyer, told the Telegraph that he was in discussions about Assange going to the police by consent. Assange insisted that he could run Wikileaks even while the sex charge hung over his head. The outfit suffered a set back when Swiss authorities closed one of his bank accounts, one of the sources of funding for the Wikileaks site.

Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, said: “The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for Wikileaks , claimed Assange had been forced to keep a low profile after several threats on his life. Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld a court order to detain Assange for questioning on suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” after he appealed against two lower court rulings. He denies the allegations.

It looks like Stephens has been briefed to fight an extradition to Sweden and keep the Wikileaks boss in the UK. It is not clear what will happen if he fails or Assange goes inside. Assange has threatened the world+dog that he will release the code and unlock thousands of unedited secret documents on the Wikileaks torrent if he is arrested.

Some of those files contain the names of US contacts in Afghanistan and it will amount to a death sentence for many of them. It seems that Assange hopes this password will mean that he will have a get out of jail free card for any criminal offence he might have committed in the past or the future, making him above the law.